A hug a day keeps the doctor away

Laura Barton | July 31, 2007

"EVERYBODY NEEDS TOUCH, especially the elderly," says Beata
Aleksandrowicz. "Very often they are alone, their partners have
gone or have died or they're sick, and nobody is touching them."
Aleksandrowicz, a massage therapist, is speaking about a project
she launched last month that saw therapists across England give
free hand massages to elderly people in nursing homes. The response
was heartening. "I had reactions such as, 'Oh, I had no idea that I
need touch so much' or 'Oh, it's like I'm in fairyland!' "

Bertrand Russell once wrote: "Not only our geometry and our
physics, but our whole conception of what exists outside us is
based upon the sense of touch." But our experience of touch is
dwindling. Increasingly we live alone, have virtual friends, shy
away from any kind of physical contact with strangers for fear it
might be unhygienic or inappropriate or could become violent.

The effects of not touching can prove detrimental to our
wellbeing, both as individuals and as a society. "When you touch or
are touched, you get the feeling of being connected with yourself
and with others," Aleksandrowicz says, placing one hand on my arm.
"When I touch you, you feel my touch - so by my touch you feel that
you exist and you can connect with me. It is a feeling of being
important, of being taken care of."

A 1997 study into the amount of touching and aggression among
adolescents looked at the behaviour of 40 teenagers in McDonald's
outlets in Paris and Miami. It found American adolescents spent
considerably less time stroking, kissing, hugging and leaning
against their peers than their French counterparts did.

Interestingly, the Americans showed more self-touching, such as
playing with rings on their fingers, wringing their hands, twirling
hair, wrapping arms around themselves, cracking knuckles, biting
their lips, and also behaviour that was more aggressive, verbally
and physically, towards their peers.

These findings are worrying, particularly because research
suggests an absence of touching and physical interaction during
adolescence may result in violent behaviour in later life. Touch
deprivation appears to lead to a depletion in norepinephrine and
serotonin, which, with dop-amine, are neurotransmitters affecting
mood. When levels of norepinephrine and serotonin fall, levels of
dopamine are left uninhibited, leading to the impulsive, often
aggressive, behaviour associated with high levels of dopamine.
(Research also suggests that levels of norepinephrine and serotonin
may be increased through touch.)

Even though we're isolating ourselves from it, humans crave
physical touch. It is one of the reasons people keep pets,
Aleksandrowicz believes. "Because they can touch them, they can
exchange warmth with them."

In many ways it was her own yearning for touch that brought
Aleksandrowicz to massage. "I had some problems with my second
husband," she says. "We had a lot of problems with intimacy, we
couldn't open up for each other, and our friend just gave us the
advice to try to touch each other a lot and just see how it goes.
And I was amazed how closed I was to touch. I could not receive
touch - it made me panic."

Now she offers courses for couples (as well as encouraging
parents to massage their children, so they grow up to find touch
usual). "You suddenly see these men who open up so much," she
says.

Aleksandrowicz recently returned from a trip to meet bushmen in
the Kalahari. She expected them to have a much freer approach to
physical interaction and was shocked to find that was not the case.
"I was in the middle of Namibia, 40C, sitting on the sand, with
people who I've never seen before, whose culture is 40,000 years
old, and they were all asking about touch," she says.

She massaged everyone in the village, sometimes several times.
The first to be massaged was the oldest woman in the village.
"Suddenly there was silence, this whole village stopped what they
were doing - they stopped talking and started to sing,"
Aleksandrowicz says. She believes that the political situation of
the bushmen - landless, powerless, severed from their traditions
and history - has led to this intense feeling of disconnection. "It
was very interesting. All of them asked me to touch their chests,
the most emotional part of the body and also responsible for the
ego. They don't know who they are - they're lost."

Some would say that people in the West are also losing sight of
who they are. We shy from touching each other but are obsessed with
appearance. We would rather, for example, go under the surgeon's
knife than accept our own bodies. "We are living in a materialistic
time where if you don't see you don't have," Aleksandrowicz says.
"So we have cars, we have high salaries, we have the right shape of
our bottom ... But we stop believing that we have enormous
potential inside us."

And what does Aleksandrowicz get from a career that involves
touching people all day? "It's amazing," she says. "It is a
communication on the most basic, fundamental level, where there are
no words or judgement or ego. It's just the purest possible
interaction between two people."

The Guardian

SPONSORED LINKS

1185647872383-brisbanetimes.com.auhttp://brisbanetimes.com.au/news/health/a-hug-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away/2007/07/31/1185647872383.htmlbrisbanetimes.com.auThe Guardian2007-07-31A hug a day keeps the doctor awayLaura BartonLifeAndStyleHealthLAShttp://brisbanetimes.com.au/ffximage/2007/07/31/cmHUG_90x60,0.jpg